


Sun and Star, Forever One

by Ramzes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Don't copy to another site, F/M, Reflection, Young Love, aeweek, and not so young
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 17:56:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19256260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramzes/pseuds/Ramzes
Summary: “No god would ever deny a man his sun and that’s what you are for me, Elia Martell.” That's what Arthur Dayne said and he believed it. But the sky itself refuses sun and stars to each other and this is what they both forget.





	Sun and Star, Forever One

Her uncle returned with his squire just in time to hear the last bit of news – and Arthur was anything but thrilled. Elia was amused to see him like this – railing at the inside and trying to act calm on the outside. _Trying_ being the operative word, always those days.

“You’d better get yourself under control, else you’ll run out of opponents in the practice yard,” she heard his brother tell him one day and smiled. “No one fancies to be killed while practicing.”

Arthur huffed. “That’s nonsense,” he said. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“And when I decide I’ve had enough?” Arel Dayne asked. “I don’t feel like meeting your frustrations for weeks in a row. I have my own. And I _am_ your opponents.”

Arthur opened his mouth for an angry reply and then promptly closed it as the truth hit him: no one was willing to practice with him anymore because he was venting his frustration at something that he could not share with anyone. Not that Arel needed to be told, of course. But he would never tell. Arel kept Arthur’s secrets and Arthur kept his in turn.

Not that there was any big secret.  Many a young man admired Elia. Many. This far, she had never reciprocated. Except for one. Arthur did not know how to achieve his heart’s desire, he feared it, he was not even sure what his heart’s desire was – but he knew that a journey full of young men courting Elia, a journey ending in a promise of marriage was not it.

To his surprise, she was quite nonplussed. “There won’t be a wedding,” she claimed when they met each other in the intimacy of the small pool at the very end of the Water Gardens. The murmur of water made her voice even more mysterious than the nonsensical claim made it.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“We’re sun and star,” she said simply. “Nothing can tear them apart.”

 _Not even a disparity in their station?_ Arthur wondered but he knew Elia was aware as well. None of them had ever spoken of a marriage, a future. They had accepted that they’d never be together as something natural without dwelling on it. They just enjoyed being complete around each other – and a marriage and a series of courtships would disturb this.

Perhaps their love could only exist in the nice coolness of the Water Gardens, finding its reflection in the blue of sea and pools.

* * *

 

 “Hello, Princess.”

Elia spun around and hid her surprise behind the mask of anger. “How did you get here?”

Arthur shrugged. “I climbed on the terrace.”

“Did you kill any of the guards?”

He stared at her with genuine surprise. “Why should I do this? I could and did just avoid them. We don’t want rumours, after all.”

“Yes,” Elia retorted, cursing her stupid heart for beating faster. “A newly-minted Kingsguard can ill afford them. Then again, said Kingsguard has no business sneaking into a lady’s chamber at night uninvited.”

“You said I was never uninvited and always welcome.” Laughter had disappeared from Arthur’s face.

“This was before.”

“Before what?” he demanded. “I can’t understand you, Elia, I swear that I cannot! I waited for you at our place three times already. Two nights in a row, you did not come and by the look of you, I can safely suggest that you weren’t on your way tonight either.”

“Keep your voice down!” Elia hissed. “My chambermaids are here, they’ll hear you…”

“Why didn’t you come?”

Elia’s anger stirred, shifted, took a shade of confusion. Something was not quite right. After the oaths he had _just_ sworn, he could not have come to her looking for _this_. All of a sudden, she wondered if her heartbreak at being abandoned for another lover – glory – had been in vain. They had never talked about a future – but they had never talked about the continuation of their relationship in any way, so she did not know.

“Why did _you_ go?” she asked in a voice that was so pathetically desperate that she could slap herself – but she did not want him to think her mad. She cared about his good opinion, even now. It was the most pitiful part of this entire story.

“Because that’s what I always do when I come here and unless we have sent word, we take it for granted that we’d be together.” Arthur paused, looking at the chamber they were in. Her bedchamber. “Although I must say, this place serves me just as well.”

“Arthur!” she warned and his expression softened.

“I know, I know but… that’s what you think? That I’d deprive myself of you because of some words?”

“Oaths,” she corrected him, her heart beating wildly.

He shook his head. “Serve, obey, protect – these are oaths because I feel them in my heart. The other one was just something I had to say. Who cares what I do with my own body if it doesn’t affect my actions and loyalty?”

“The septons who hold oaths sacred, I imagine,” Elia said drily.

“The septons can live chastely themselves, then,” Arthur stated and the look with which he engulfed her was like the one when they had first realized that the thing between them was no courtly love, no passing fancy, like the one he had given her when he had first seen her without clothes. “No god would ever deny a man his sun and that’s what you are for me, Elia Martell.”

“Spoken by a star, it means a lot,” she whispered and gave up, letting him embrace her.

No, they never spoke of a future. Perhaps that was why they never had one.

Perhaps they had always known what they avoided to think about: the sky was too cruel to allow the sun and stars more than a fleeting moment now and then.

* * *

 

 

 

**The End**

 

 


End file.
